Considering all the electro-shock therapy she endured to combat depression (detailed, unflinchingly, in the first chapter), it's incredible how sharp and witty this (sort-of) memoir is. What a great writer. As with the previous book,
Wishful Drinking, it details a series of episodes and recollections from Carrie Fisher's professional and personal life. It's far from a full, chronological memoir, and reading the reviews on Amazon, it seems many were disappointed by that brevity. I thought it worked well, as the prose is so rich with wit and anecdotes. There are chapters on her relationships with her father, her stepfather, her one-time stepmother Elizabeth Taylor and so on. There's a very insightful reflection on her friendship with Michael Jackson: she shows real understanding of his problems without taking the easy tabloid route of portraying him as either monster or saint.
The topic she keeps returning to is that of her father, and how she came to know him better in his final years. She recalls him with much humour and love, and never lets sentimentality get in the way of realism: her father was hardly ever there for her, but she adored him anyway. It's touching stuff.
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